Hi everyone,
This is my first post here on the forum (and kudos for the initiative, it’s hard to find many places online to discuss free speech, the press, and the general mess that is modern media). Before moving on to the specific topic of this thread, let me introduce myself since it’s my first time here. My name is Alvaro, and I’m from Spain, though I’m currently living in Lisbon. I have a PhD in History, and I’ve been running “amateur” info sites (mostly focused on my hobbies) for a while. One of them became quite successful, becoming the most-read site in Spanish globally for its genre.
Because of my background, I’ve been pretty interested in everything happening in the media ecosystem—partly because I’m an active part of it (though in a small corner), but also because I’ve been an avid news consumer since I was a teenager. One of my favorite things to do is read newspapers (or my curated list on Twitter) with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. And I can’t help but say, wow, things have changed a lot over the past few years.
My biggest concern is that fake news is now everywhere. Not just in social media or blogs, where it started, but it’s also infiltrated online and print press. I’m not entirely sure why this is happening, but it likely has something to do with how the media landscape has evolved after the internet revolution. I’ve never worked for a newspaper, so it’s hard for me to say for sure.
On this topic, I read a couple of tweets a few days ago from David Simon (yes, the writer of The Wire and a former journalist) in response to the latest news about Russia paying a lot of money to some bloggers to spread blatant lies and sway public opinion in their favor. Here are the links:
I’ll share the content of the original tweets below, but I recommend reading the entire threads, as the conversations are quite entertaining.
Tweet 1:
“Is it time yet to revisit all the early heralding of the internet’s pure democracy, of the idea
of “citizen journalists,” of each and every voice being able to be heard being a good thing for our ability to find truth and govern ourselves? Because having spent a previous career in newsrooms, as part of the cold, organized monolith that was our gatekeeping mainstream media, I know that we were often too herd-like and centrist, sometimes misled and sometimes capable of publishing horseshit on incomplete or contradictory data. Sometimes we got it dead wrong. But every day, I remember that the editors read the copy and tried to verify what they could and avoid what they could not. And no one could pay us a fucking dime to say what we didn’t think was the story we thought we had. Fact is, I once tried to sneak a piece of celery through some ranch dip at some politician’s fundraiser because the guy was late showing up to make a speech and I was starving. Another reporter smacked it out of my hand: “That’s Harry McGuirk’s celery.”
We had an ethic. We believed in our role, however flawed and vulnerable to error our work product might at times be. So fuck the influencers, fuck the pimps who bought them, fuck their rancid whoredom, and fuck a media culture that has bypassed the gatekeepers at least trying to hold to a core ethos. The marginalization and eventual death of old-fashioned journalism and what has ensued is going to be what ends our republic. And everyone who championed some purist vision of a post-mainstream media future is now and forever, officially, a rube.”
Tweet 2:
“You need hierarchical unaligned news organizations committed to the vetting of facts. Newsrooms. Editors. Standards. Accountabilities. A profession that allows for careers so that no one is in the pay of anything other than the organization. That’s what we traded for this shit.”
To be honest, I believe he has a point. The whole idea of “citizen journalism,” while it has its advantages, has become a Trojan horse for people with shady intentions, at best. It’s important to note that I’m not advocating for the old system with rigid, closed gatekeepers. “Citizen journalism,” if we understand it as the ability to share your expertise online without going through a gatekeeper, has opened up a world of possibilities. I’ve benefited from it with great success. It can improve our exposure to new opinions and elevate public discourse. However, in my opinion, it has been undermined by fake news.
Reading Simon’s tweets, it’s now clearer to me that the good thing about gatekeepers is the fact-checking and quality control they provide. And that’s something people still value. Why do we still buy newspapers? Because we trust editors to curate the information we need. Why haven’t book editors been replaced by self-editing services? Because we value their role in selecting the best books for their readers. So, yes, I believe gatekeepers are still needed to help navigate the sea of fake news, disinformation, and junk content that’s overwhelming us.
However, the question is, can we do this differently? Can we prevent gatekeepers from becoming power brokers who decide who gets a voice in the public sphere? For me, that’s the balance we need to strike. I’m not sure if Olas is addressing this issue, but I’d like to learn more from you guys. Can decentralization solve this conundrum? I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Cheers,
Biduido